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Marcus Lauzon had been sent back to prison. The Prime Minister had been sent back home to Ottawa. The Americans had been alerted. The conspirators were hearing knocks on their doors. Woken up with warrants.

But there was one more thing that had to be done before the two comrades could finally go to bed.

They were alone in the bistro. It was, in fact, closed, but Gabri had left them the key. Most of the lights around the village green were out and the villagers snug and safe in their homes.

“You could have told me.” Jean-Guy’s words came out black and blue with hurt.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I made a split-second decision not to. By then I’d grasped that Lauzon was, in fact, behind all this. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d see the message and realize that we’d found the file and knew about Mont-Laurier. About him.”

Armand watched Jean-Guy as he spoke, to see if his own words might act as a balm. They did not.

“Why not? Why couldn’t you take the chance on me? Trust me?”

Now the anger appeared. It bubbled to the surface and poured out of Jean-Guy in his expression. In the balled-up fists thrust into his lap. In the hunched shoulders of a wounded animal protecting its core.

Armand shook his head and heaved an exhausted sigh with the effort to remember his thinking. His reasoning. It wasn’t even that. It was instinct. Jean-Guy was standing beside the man responsible for all this. A man so cunning he’d seen and foreseen every twist and turn.

A creature who’d not only been one step ahead of them the entire time, from the moment that note had been slipped into Armand’s jacket pocket months ago, but who’d also been behind them, inching them in the direction he wanted them to go.

Toward Woodford.

Marcus Lauzon had been everywhere. In their heads, infecting their instincts and reason. Influencing their every thought. Choreographing their every step. Manipulating them.

Manipulating him. Armand now realized that.

He could not risk Lauzon seeing, sensing, even the slightest change in Jean-Guy. For all he knew, the Black Wolf was still playing them. Even now. The thought terrified him.

He held his suddenly cold hands toward the fire dying in the bistro grate.

Their only chance, Armand had felt, was to do the unexpected. Marcus Lauzon obviously knew him well. Well enough to know he would always, always trust Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Would always, always tell him everything.

And so, in a double sin of omission and commission, he’d withheld vital information and fed him false information. Only if Jean-Guy believed him to be an ally would Marcus Lauzon feel safe. And maybe, maybe lower his defenses.

As Inspector Beauvoir’s commanding officer, as the head of homicide for the Sûreté, Chief Inspector Gamache did not need to explain his decisions to a subordinate. But as Jean-Guy’s father-in-law, as his friend, he did. Especially since his decisions had put the man beside him in danger.

He’d have felt the same way, had Jean-Guy done that to him. Rationally, he’d understand, but the head and the heart did not always align.

Armand quietly explained why he’d done it. When he’d finished, Jean-Guy nodded. Then he stood up to leave and Armand felt his heart sink.

He too got to his feet. They faced each other. Two tired warriors.

Then Jean-Guy reached out and pulled the larger, older man forward. And held him, tight. So that their chests pressed against each other and Armand could feel Jean-Guy’s heart. Beating in rhythm with his own.

Then the two comrades slowly made their way across the village green, pausing to look at the three tall pines. The code that told them they were safe. They were home.

And then they joined their wives in bed. And slept soundly for the first time in months.

“No, I mean how did you know there was more going on after the poisoning plot,” pressed Workman. “Everyone thought that was the end of it.”

“We have a problem,” said Lacoste, and everyone at the table turned to her.

“What?” said Chief Inspector Tardiff. “Again?”

“Still?” said Nichol.

“Non, non, désolée. That was the message the Chief Inspector sent Jean-Guy and me.” She turned to Armand. “You’d gone back over Charles Langlois’s two notebooks and realized we had them in the wrong order. The one we thought was second, that held his conclusions and the key to the poisoning, was actually the first.”

“The stepping stone to the real plot,” said Beauvoir. “Only we couldn’t figure out what it was, just that something else, something bigger, was going to happen.”